HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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The Heptarchy was soon after this destroyed by Egbert, who assumed thegovernment of England in the character of an absolute monarch. Emboldened,perhaps, by the temporary disorders which attended that important change, theDanes, who for some years past had infested the northern shores of Britain insmall parties, made a descent on the coast of Kent, and ravaged the isle ofShepey. Some historians have attributed the maritime consequence of thispeople to the severities and tyranny exercised against them by the emperorCharlemagne, who, though represented as naturally generous and humane, hadbeen induced, by his religious bigotry, and rather too extravagant zeal in thepropagation of those tenets which he had himself adopted and espoused, toattempt enforcing them by that most coercive of all measures, military execu-tion. A considerable portion of the inhabitants of Germany were pagans, andbeing extremely uneasy as well under their civil, as their religious subjection,had revolted from their conqueror, who, not displeased, perhaps, at so fair anexcuse for punishing their infidelity, not only carried all the fury of war,accompanied by its utmost horrors, through their country, but is actually re-ported to have decimated the inhabitants, after their surrender, for the pur-pose of securing their submission to his rigorous edicts, which imposed anunqualified compliance with his imperial will. Disdaining these trammels,the more warlike of the Pagans are reported to have fled into Jutland, (fromwhence the Saxons had issued forth) in the hope of avoiding the fury of his per-secution. That country being inhabited, and in consequence of repeated emi-grations into warmer climates, but thinly, by a people whose manners, andwhose warlike disposition were congenial to their own, they were received notonly with the kindest hospitality, but with an assurance that the personal aidof their hosts should not be wanting, to obtain full satisfaction for the w'rongsand injuries which the strangers had sustained.

Stimulated and encouraged not merely by the promises, but by the actualperformance of them, a part betook themselves to maritime pursuits, andspreading into the adjacent wild and inhospitable districts, became distinguishedby the appellation of Danes and Norwegians, who, as is well known, became,in a subsequent age, united under the rule of one sovereign. Being obliged tomaintain themselves in their uncultivated country by fishing, they had acquiredno contemptible experience in the art of navigation, and in their military ex-cursions pursued the method practised against the Roman empire by the moreearly Saxons. They made descents in small bodies from their ships, or rather

boats,